Sunday, August 12, 2007

A money game snapshot. An interesting table of candidate contributions (released on July 30) from the Center for Responsive Politics (I've slightly edited this table to make it fit):

Candidate

% from Donors
of $200 or less

% from Donors
of $2,300+

% from Donors
of $4,600

Obama, Barack

28%

44%

9%

Clinton, Hillary

9%

70%

44%

Romney, Mitt

11%

49%

1%

Giuliani, Rudy

12%

63%

22%

McCain, John

19%

51%

12%

Edwards, John

23%

42%

17%


Both New York candidates--Clinton and Giuliani--seem to have a relatively high reliance upon donors giving the maximum $4,600. (Romney's numbers are a little skewed because 20% of his contributions so far have been from himself, but he doesn't have that many $200-or-less donors, either.) Indeed, Clinton's reliance on high-level donors (44% of her individual contributions coming from those giving the most allowed by law) far supersedes that of any other candidate at the moment (Giuliani, her closest rival in this regard, only has one half of that dependence at 22%). Among the front-running declared candidates, Obama has the most dependence on the $200-and-under demographic on the Democratic side, and McCain has the most on the Republican side. The declared candidate with the most dependence on the $200-and-under crowd? Republican Tom Tancredo: 79% of his individual contributions are $200 and under.
These figures are likely to change, but this does provide an interesting snapshot for the moment.